Patrick Cadigan: 0:00

Welcome. This is the Postsecondary Transition podcast where we have conversations around the ins and outs and everything in between of the transition process for families of students with disabilities. I'm one of the hosts. My name is Patrick Cadigan, and I am a public school transition coordinator. As always, I have a co-host, and who would that be?

Meghan Smallwood: 0:18

I am Meghan Smallwood, and I am also a public school transition coordinator.

Patrick Cadigan: 0:24

And we are back for our talk with Martha Goodman and the online tool that she created for families; MEIRA. This is a discussion that is already in progress.

Martha Goodman: 0:37

There aren't that many things that I think are mission critical for students while they're still in high school. Yes, applying to DDA early. I advise families to do it when they're little, because then when they're teenagers, they can just do a record review usually, and there's no face to face element to it. I just think it's a lot easier for families to have applied when the children were young and then update records later. Yeah, so that's one thing. Certainly, Pre-ETS is something you want to do when you're in high school, because that's the only time to do it, being sure that you haven't piled up tons of birthday money in your bank account, right? That's, that's a that's something to watch out for, be sure your testing is up to date before you leave high school. And I think that's about it. I mean, almost anything else you can deal with later. And those, those are significant pieces, but they're not really time consuming.

Meghan Smallwood: 1:42

Yeah, I think it's just the overall thought of it all and the finality of the school.

Martha Goodman: 1:48

Yes.

Meghan Smallwood: 1:49

I mean, you know.

Martha Goodman: 1:50

Well, well, listen, my daughter was in a parochial school program. We all, everyone was on board. We had the funding, everything was in place for the girl to stay until they were 21 my daughter was among the oldest in the class. You know, we started talking to them about the fall when they were seniors, and they all were like, What are you talking about? Coming back in the fall uniforms. We're done. We're out. What like you guys are? They were very clear that the parents have all lost their minds, because everyone knows seniors are out. And within weeks, this was like in the springtime. Within weeks, the class completely collapsed for the fall, wow. And so everyone was thrown into the Oh my gosh. What are we doing next scenario, and there were six or seven girls in the class, and three or four did one thing, two did something else, and then my daughter left the country.

Meghan Smallwood: 2:54

Left the country..?

Martha Goodman: 2:55

She left the country.

Meghan Smallwood: 2:57

Oh, wow.

Martha Goodman: 2:58

So...so those sudden transitions, even if you've known about them for 18 years, they still feel sudden.

Meghan Smallwood: 3:08

That's like a very good point, and that's something we've also told parents too, you could have it all laid out to a T and it still will not come to fruition like you planned.

Patrick Cadigan: 3:19

I feel like that. That's also been made much more complicated by some of the, you know, the government and some of the funding issues.

Meghan Smallwood: 3:27

Yeah, those funding pieces, yeah.

Patrick Cadigan: 3:28

So, I mean, we had recently heard families who they they knew that there was going to be a gap from the time that they left the school system to the time that services started.

Martha Goodman: 3:39

Yeah.

Patrick Cadigan: 3:40

But in some cases, those those gaps are getting wider and unexpectedly.

Martha Goodman: 3:45

So yes, absolutely. I mean, thank God, we're fine. We are perfectly fine, and Meira is great and doesn't need a lot of support for her day to day life. But why she so left high school was 19, I guess, and so she would have, in theory, under Governor's transitioning funding July 1, this summer, when she was 21 she should have been funded. But as we speak, I'm not sure that her but has been approved even to this minute.

Meghan Smallwood: 4:23

Yeah.

Martha Goodman: 4:23

So yes, for us, it's not a big problem, but for some families, this would be devastating; absolutely, yeah.

Meghan Smallwood: 4:32

Yeah, we had a couple families that were in a situation where they were just waiting and and they needed the funding to come in.

Martha Goodman: 4:38

Well, at one point they told me so. I guess this was in August or early September that that in our central region, there were, I believe, 540 transitioning youth that should have come online for July 1, and as of that date, only one had come online.

Meghan Smallwood: 4:58

Oh my gosh. I mean, I believe it, though.

Martha Goodman: 5:01

That was a statistic from DDA, that's not...

Meghan Smallwood: 5:04

Wow.

Martha Goodman: 5:04

...something up.

Meghan Smallwood: 5:05

Yeah, well, this was the first year that I've had families tell me they had to go to their local representatives, they had to go high up, they had to go in person to Baltimore. I mean, they had to be the squeaky wheel. And unfortunately, there was families that didn't know that, and we're just kind of waiting by.

Martha Goodman: 5:25

See, this goes right back to that political advocacy part. I asked Disability Rights Maryland, yeah, we should be advocating too regarding these delays. And they gave me two names at DDA, and I wrote to them and CCed, some local legislators, as you mentioned, Meghan; crickets.

Meghan Smallwood: 5:46

Wow.

Martha Goodman: 5:47

DDA did not respond.

Meghan Smallwood: 5:49

Yeah.

Martha Goodman: 5:49

The local legislators did, but not DDA.

Meghan Smallwood: 5:53

Interesting.

Martha Goodman: 5:53

So yeah, it's tough, really tough.

Meghan Smallwood: 5:56

It's very tough, yeah.

Martha Goodman: 5:59

Yeah, it's one of those where we could go down the rabbit hole, but...

Meghan Smallwood: 6:02

Yeah. Well, we have to ask then, what is Meira doing now?

Martha Goodman: 6:05

is Mira doing now? Oh, great question. So when she finished high school, she went to Israel for a year to study, and she was working in a nursery school there and doing a lot of volunteer work, and being in Israel, she came back and we talked about going to CCBC Single Step postsecondary disability program. We love that program. Okay, so Meira, you know, she had worked in a nursery school when she when was in Israel, and she thought that's what she wanted to do. So we did arrange for her to volunteer at the nursery school that just up the street from our house, so she can walk there independently. She leaves so proudly. Every day the alarm goes off and she's out like a shot, but they don't pay her. And I thought, okay, and I have a lot of mixed emotions about about that. Because, on the one hand, I know that they could hire somebody with a master's degree right to do her job. On the other hand, is it right that she's giving them an actual support and not being paid? So I have a lot of mixed emotions about that, but my theory was, if she went to CCBC and entered the child care assistant program, and if she successfully completed it, they really wouldn't have a leg to stand on to not pay her. So that was my that was my thinking. So the first hurdle for that is you have to have a fourth grade reading level as tested by not a test that you use in public schools in a off the shelf commercial package. That's what they use for testing. So in pursuit of that, she's been taking the literacy and communication classes at CCBC in hopes to reach that threshold to be able to go into the child care program. We'll see, we'll see how that all works out. But that's, that's what we're working on now, and this is really where my advocacy remains really constant from when she was in kindergarten at the school in Baltimore City that is a separate public day school for children, primarily that are medically fragile or have other, you know, significant issues. And my goal always was to get to a 5th grade reading level. And I have told every breathing soul that I have encountered that that's the goal. And right now, I feel guardedly optimistic that we'll get there eventually, but it takes so much work on the parents part.

Patrick Cadigan: 8:54

Does she like the class?

Martha Goodman: 8:56

Does she like the class? Um, you know, this is now her third semester of doing it. This summer, went away to camp, she came back talking about school. She's like, I don't know if I want to go back. And I'm like, Okay, I understand that. We talk about that, and I say, "Listen, I am not going to tell you what to do. I am not to tell you what to do. This is your choice, but if you ask me for advice, as your mother, what I think is best for you, I think it is best for you to go back." And we're we're very close, and she trusts me a lot, and she was willing to go back. The difference was that I decided, you know what, it was very difficult to tell how much progress she was making from their reporting system. I thought, Okay, this time, I'm going to go back to my roots, and I'm going to work with her a few times a week on the reading program that they use. And it's very illuminating, actually, and really very, very interesting. I love I feel most like a parent when working with her around learning to read better. And we've been doing, you know, since she was like 3 or 4. So that is like the sweet spot of my parenting really. It's important for parents to know that no matter how good a school you're in or how great your teacher is, really the buck stops with you. It really just does.

Patrick Cadigan: 10:32

Hey, there listeners, just a quick note. This is where we're going to end the conversation with Martha. However, this wasn't all that we had to talk about during our recorded online discussion, there was a connection problem, and that led to a serious breakdown in the quality of the recorded audio that we captured. We were really hoping that we were going to be able to keep some of it, but at the end of the day, the bits and pieces that were clear to understand just made no sense when we edited them together. We're really sorry this happened, and we did let Martha know. To be honest, it just really gives us a good reason to bring her back and have another great discussion that we promise we'll make sure to capture in its entirety.

Meghan Smallwood: 11:44

As always, you'll find links to the information from our conversations in our show notes. We would love for the information from this and all our other discussions to reach as many families as possible, and we need your help to do that. You can find our conversations at www.p2transition.com. Like, Follow, Share out the podcast. Our conversations are posted to all the major platforms, including Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, and that's just naming a few. So please share and share often. Please also check out our YouTube channel now that we've done some of the legwork for you by curating videos of topics that revolve around transition. We have playlists for guardianship, alternatives to guardianship, ABLE accounts, and there's more to come. So please be sure to subscribe there as well. And then finally, check out our website, which is full of information and links to resources around the transition process. So open your web browser of choice and surf to www.postsecondarytransition.com and we thank you so much for the time you spent with us, and look forward to talking again soon.